Food and beverage stains are an ongoing problem on floor and counter finishes, particularly those in restaurants and grocery stores. Food products such as mustard, ketchup, coffee, and cola are commonly found in supermarkets where floor surfaces such as tile floors are employed. When they are spilled they can cause semi-permanent dark yellow, brown, or red stains to the coating itself or the underlying substrate. Workers in these situations are often unable to immediately clean up a spill that can result in discoloration of the floor finish. These stains can be very difficult to remove using traditional cleaning and laundering techniques, and are especially difficult to remove from floor tiles. For example, when mustard is spilled on vinyl composite tiles coated with a typical floor finish, both the finish and tiles may stain. Removal of such stains may require recoating the floor or even replacing the stained tiles. This can require substantial time and expenditure. While some polymers incorporated into a floor finish are synthesized using an oxidizer catalyst, the level of residual oxidizer present when that polymer is formulated into a floor finish composition is insufficient to decolorize stains on the coating.
While stains are eventually removable from the finish via specialty cleaners, these cleaners often do so at the expense of damage to the floor finish, making it necessary to recoat the floor. The time and expense of repairing the floor damage represents a substantial expenditure on the facility's part. Therefore, a need exists for a means of preventing or eliminating stains on floor finishes without causing damage to the finish.
One means of avoiding stains without film damage is to incorporate certain commercially available polymers such as Rohm & Haas's Rhoplex NTS-2923 into the finish. However, these polymers are much more expensive than conventional polyacrylates and require highly concentrated specialty strippers for their removal. Additionally, polymers such as this also tend to be difficult to formulate and are often incompatible with other polymers.
The inventors have surprisingly discovered that floor finish and/or sealer when combined with an oxidizing agent is able to decolorize stains such as coffee or mustard as they attempt to penetrate the coating film. The end result is partial or full decolorization of the stain. This permits cleaning of any material remaining on top of the film with mild cleaners, or even water, to afford a clean floor coating without film damage.